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Best Place To Have A Heat Stroke

2016 Spoleto Festival Finale Middleton Place

Staff Pick

The Spoleto Festival Finale is arguably the best deal of the entire 17-day international performing arts extravaganza. For under $50, you can unwind on the grounds of gorgeous Middleton Place with a BYOB policy that means rosé all day and a picnic basket stuffed to the brim that even Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t carry. The music lineup is always top notch — we’re talking Shovels and Rope, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and Nathaniel Rateliffe & the Night Sweats — and there’s a beer garden with local brews for anyone who forgot to ice down the cooler. Spoleto Festival Finale 2016 was, and we say this with the confidence of a writer who checks her weather app all the time, the hottest day of the century. Preppily dressed Charlestonians shamelessly ripped off button-ups and hiked up maxi dresses as sweat became a second skin. The sky and the grass became one big blur of heat. Cheese boards melted into one gooey, delicious blob, and beers had to be thrown back in under five minutes before they tasted like day-old lukewarm bathwater. But, if you’re going to have a heat stroke on any day, anywhere, that was decidedly the place to have it. —Mary Scott Hardaway